Research Catalogue

This project combines artistic and anthropological research on spontaneous gardening in open public space, predominantly in Brno, CZ. The team, mostly comprising recent graduates and graduate students of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Brno University of Technology, chose gardens and plantings which were, in most cases, rather exceptional. Unlike most typical front gardens, the ones in this study are somehow peculiar, due to their location, their composition and planting schemes, their scale, or methods of those who garden there. The anthropologists on the team analyzed a Facebook group dedicated to street gardening and conducted several interviews, while the artistic team responded to particular places with which they interacted. Some results of this research have been presented to the public in the form of an application comprising an audioguide and an interactive map; this exposition in the Research catalogue documents some of these findings. The team Barbora Lungová is a visual artist and has taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Brno University of Technology since 2007. Her field of practice is painting and art projects focusing on plants, gardening, and queerness. She is the coordinator of the Partisans with a Hoe project. Lucia Bergamaschi is a visual artist working across the media of photography, sound, and installation. She earned an MA in Fine Art at Università Iuav di Venezia and an MA in Law at Università di Bologna. She is currently finishing her MA studies at the FFA BUT. Nela Maruškevičová combines painting, installations, and glass in her artistic practice. She is a 2023 graduate of the FFA BUT. Kateřina Konvalinová is a visual artist interested in the overlapping spaces of art, communal life, farming, and ritual. She earned her MA in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and is currently a doctoral student at the FFA BUT. Iva Balcaříková is a graphic designer and a member of the team behind the curated audio walks created by Galerie Art in Brno. She is currently finishing her MA studies at the FFA BUT. Hana Drštičková is a visual artist and a social anthropologist interested in environmental and queer topics. She graduated with an MA in Fine Arts from the FFA BUT in 2022 and with a BA in social anthropology from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Masaryk University and is currently a doctoral student at the Gender Studies Department of Charles University in Prague. Anastasia Blokhina is a social anthropologist who graduated with an MA tfrom the Faculty of Social Sciences of Masaryk University in 2022. Polyna Davydenko is a photographer and a video artist who documents social and environmental issues in her work, most recently those connected with the war in Ukraine. Filip Dušek is a media artist who studied at the Department of Photography at the FFA BUT. The project was conducted under the Specific Research FaVU-S-23-8441 Program.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION “Working Title” is an art performance about labor conditions and class structures. The motivation behind the piece is to interrogate the many ways in which work affects us. The boundaries between labor and art are also examined, as the physical and mental demands placed on the performers reflect the burdens of modern working life. The format mirrors a regular workday: the performance lasts eight hours, including a break. It is presented in two versions—a day shift and a night shift. Today, many sectors are marked by rapid change, demands for efficiency and ever-increasing productivity. Which values are prioritised, and which are undermined to meet the needs of such a labor market? In the piece, structural challenges will be studied and observed through scenarios acted out on stage. Some examples of questions that will be used to form these scenarios: -At what cost do you actually sell your time? -What kind of value is, beyond the monetary, created for those who buy your time? -In what ways, physically and mentally, do you experience your labouring hours, after you have clocked out? The performance will explore themes such as: - Monotony and repetition as fundamental elements of labor - Power dynamics in the workplace and how privileges are maintained and reinforced - The body’s needs in relation to work: illness, disabilities, menstruation, and pregnancy - The physiological consequences of labor - The value of time as an economic and social divide - The close link between economic stability and mental health In a time when the job market is shaped by rapid technological development, climate change and an uncertain future, thinking through alternatives for how to organise ourselves has become crucial. With this performance, we aim to dig into the mechanisms at stake in order to hopefully be able to both raise questions and think deeply about how we may face the challenges ahead collectively. A dynamic, experimental and collectively driven form of artistic expression is combined with societal critique. We believe in art as a way of adding to the discourse in poetic manners, activating questions through embodied experiences. With this unique format, we hope to open new perspectives on what labor means for individuals and society—and what values we wish to build our common future upon.

Based on the Jungian concept of the shadow, I wanted to develop illustrations that depict a journey within the self, leading to the discovery and understanding of one’s own shadow. It represents the dark side of our personality, which we refuse to acknowledge and accept.

Having departed from the idea of exploring the subject of “childhood politics” and memory (topics that both Anja Suša and Dejan Kaludjerović have been interested in and invested in through their own artistic practices in theatre and visual arts, as well as in this collaboration), they soon found themselves caught up in the discussion about artistic mandates and the potential artistic format as the output of the research project. The discussion became so intense that it entirely changed the focus of the collaboration—from the content of the project to collaborative protocols—and finally landed in what is best described by Claire Bishop as the “Grey Zone,” which can also be understood as a liminal space between contemporary artistic practices in the fields of performing and visual arts. Coming from the ideologies of the Black Box and the White Cube, which have been further reinforced by many years of institutional practice that still revolves around the idea of formal artistic education and artistic mandates, the artists soon realized that they wanted to embark on the journey of reinventing themselves in the artistic field of the “other,” despite the lack of formal training or any previous experience. They tried to explore the possibility of entering each other’s art fields based solely on artistic experience, and not on any particular art training.

How can embodied listening be performed, from my ears (body) to yours? How are we (dis)oriented? ‘Braced under the heating sun’ is centred around listening to and documenting my childhood home and its aural particularities through processes of embodied listening. The project is based on my recordings and experiences there between February and March 2020 (bookended by the waning Australian black summer bush fires and the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic). The house is made from wood and so bends with the weather. The wooden structure amplifies the sounds of our habitation. The house is located on the edge of a small town and next to a sugarcane farm in North Queensland. Although in a tropical climate it has no flyscreens, and air-conditioning in only one room. The windows are open all of the time to let a breeze through. Most evenings you can find green tree frogs, geckos and insects amongst other animals in or around the house. In this way nature (a wild exterior) pushes against and blurs into the home (an organised interior). It is never silent there, the sounds are a mix of all forces; human/animal, natural/industrial. For me, it resonates as a site that is connected to the world despite its rural location. In this house the “rhythms and cycles of the living and the immediate needs of every living being are highlighted and played out. It is where intensities proliferate themselves, where forces are expressed for their own sake, where sensation lives and experiments, where the future is affectively and perceptually anticipated” (Elizabeth Grosz 2008). In this audio paper, I discuss this installation work and my continued research on embodied listening.

theory practice theorize practice practice theory ... By using any of these words I am establishing an order of importance among them. My body cannot vocalize two of them at the same time. How in the world can this terrible order of things be abolished? How can we relate to a possible merge of the dichotomy theory/practice through language?